Iran, North Korea, Malaysia: Your Wednesday Briefing

Good morning. The Iran decision, Malaysian elections and the Intellectual Dark Web: Here’s what you need to know.

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CreditDoug Mills/The New York Times

• President Trump declared he was withdrawing the U.S. from the Iran accord, calling it a “horrible one-sided deal” that didn’t bring peace and never would. The move isolated the U.S. from many allies and raised the prospect of increased tensions with China and Russia.

The U.S. is preparing to reinstate all sanctions it had waived as part of the nuclear accord and to impose additional economic penalties, adding to the troubles facing Iran, where a sense of crisis runs deep and wide.

Our recent investigation into thousands of internal Islamic State documents led to a five-part podcast, “Caliphate,” and an in-depth article. Some readers have asked about The Times’s right to collect and keep the papers, if researchers will be able to use them, and whether names should have been redacted.

Business

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CreditChristie’s Images Ltd. 2018

• Christie’s New York begins a three-day auction of a Rockefeller family art collection that could be the largest single-owner sale, and the largest charitable one, in history. Above, one of five Monets on offer.

But buying growth isn’t the only option for Japan, the world’s third-largest economy. Our writer in Tokyo sees the country beginning to dominate by making robotics, technical components and other hardware — “the stuff that makes the stuff for today’s digital revolution.”

In the News

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CreditCCTV, via Associated Press Video, via Associated Press

• A Chinese court sentenced a former top Communist Party official, Sun Zhengcai, above, to life in prison for criminal corruption, though political disloyalty also appears to have played a major role. [Associated Press]

• Malaysia’s ruling coalition has lost more ground ahead of the general election on Wednesday, according to an independent poll, but it could still win enough parliamentary seats to ward off a triumph by a bloc led by Mahathir Mohamad, the 92-year-old former prime minister. [Reuters]

• In the U.S., it’s decision day for contested Republican Senate primaries in three key Trump states: Indiana, Ohio and West Virginia. [The New York Times]

• An ancient virus similar to H.I.V. is spreading across Australia’s Northern Territory, hitting indigenous communities particularly hard. Doctors warn that its “prevalence is off the charts.” [CNN]

• An Afghan airstrike on a Taliban gathering last month killed or wounded more than 100 people. Most of them were children, a new U.N. report says. [The New York Times]

• Faux pas: The Israeli press is filled with accounts of outrage that, at a dinner hosted by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week, his Japanese counterpart, Shinzo Abe, was served dessert in a shoe-shaped vessel. [The Japan News]

Noteworthy

• The theme of this year’s Met Gala was the influence of Catholicism on fashion, and stars like Rihanna, above, filled the red carpet with papal tiaras, halo, bejeweled crucifixes and angel wings.

• In memoriam:Jhoon Rhee, 86, a taekwondo grandmaster. He trained with Muhammad Ali and Bruce Lee and taught hundreds of congressman how to spar, popularizing the Korean martial art in the U.S.

• And in one of our most-read stories today, our Op-Ed writer Bari Weiss looks at the Intellectual Dark Web, an alliance of iconoclastic thinkers, academic renegades and media personalities that is making an end run around the mainstream conversation, and drawing attention around the world. “People are starved for controversial opinions,” one member said.

Back Story

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CreditJ.M. Barrie, via Sotheby's, via Getty Images

Peter Pan helps sick children. Not fictionally; financially.

The author J.M. Barrie, who was born on this day in 1860, donated the rights to his most famous creation to the Great Ormond Street children’s hospital in London in 1929. In a front-page report at the time, The New York Times estimated their worth at “roughly $10,000 a year,” which it said was equivalent to a sixth of the hospital’s income.

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